I'm at wits end. I've been troubleshooting for about 4 days to get the Adobe TV instructional videos and the Layersmagazine.com videos to play.

Windows 7, 64-bit & 32-bit.

Browsers: IE 9 32-bit, IE 9 64-bit, Firefox 9

Java ver 6, update 30

Adobe Flash 11.1.102.55

Adove Shockwave (see below)

I have followed Adobe's & Microsoft's troublshooting guides for resolving Flash issues, and have read multiple forums suggestions:

updated via IE 64-bit for my system

installed as Administrator

uninstalled, and reinstalled...

turned off virus-checker while installing

checked Active X status (enabled)

checked the Internet Options security Active X scripts

checked the IE9 compatibility view

checked the Firefox plugins

The Adobe Flash site checker shows that my Flash is working, however, (most) videos I mentioned still do not run in any of my browsers - it just sits there and spins without starting.

Now I'm thinking, Maybe it's a Shockwave issue. I encountered several issues in the Adobe Shockwave section:

1. I browsed Adobe's 'Help/Search' page & searched on "Shockwave". I clicked on the 'Get Support' link, then 'Troubleshoot SWP for Windows'. Somewhere in there Shockwave downloaded itself. I didn't click on Download.

2. Adobe said after downloading (via IE 32-bit) it should be in "C:\Windows\system32\Adobe\Shockwave 11" - but it wasn't located there. I finally found it in "C:\Windows\sysWOW64\Adobe\Shockwave 11"

When opening this page I get an immediate prompt from my security that something wants to control or download something, without clicking anything.

This morning I asked an IT friend to view Adobe TV site videos on his Windows 7 64-bit computer at work, which does not have all the latest updates. He experiences what I saw prior to making IE and Flash updates this week, which is videos on the Adobe TV tutorial site play sporadically - some play some don't. Nothing plays for me fully updated on everything.

YouTube, CNN, Windows Player videos, Quicktime videos all work fine. There are definitely at least two Adobe bugs, one in Flash and one in Shockwave.

Absolutely agree with you and it's driving me crazy as well. Something happened on or around the 27th Jan that has seriously snafu'ed Adobe Shockwave. Since that point, I have very similar issues with not being able to run certain (but not all) Shockwave applications within browsers... I'm on XP 32 bit SP3 and get identical reports of DCR errors with IE8, Firefox, Chrome and even Opera.

I've done everything you have - used Adobe's discrete uninstallers to remove both Shockwave and Flash and then re-installed (trying both Slim and allegedly Full re-installers, though it's darn hard to find a Full Version re-installer), run system rollbacks, even uninstalled and re-installed IE8, made sure all the permissions were correctly set, even flushed my DNS cache etc etc. All I am sure of is that it's very definitely a browser-independant issue.

What struck a chord with me in your post was the bit about not seeing an animated image after re-installing Shockwave. Whenever I go to http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/welcome/ all I also get is a static graphic telling me that my version is the latest (11.6.3r633) and no animation at all. That strikes me as a little weird.

I reinstalled Shockwave today to see if it anything had changed. It looks the same as it did the other day, a static page. I thought at one time (a year ago maybe...) it animated, but I don't know what it's supposed to look like today. My confirmation page looks like this:

I tested the Flash test page again, it animates (as it did previously). It says I'm on the latest version. OK

So, in reviewing the 'AdobeTV' site link that I mentioned last week, it's now a 404 page, interesting. It appears Adobe's moved, removed or reorganized the videos. That solves the problem on the Adobe TV site, but doesn't address why I can't see similar videos on other sites....

Well at least I can watch AdobeTV ... haven't checked all the links yet, we'll see.

Maybe the folks at Adobe TV could tell the Adobe Forum Moderator why they removed/changed/updated the videos, so the fix could be mentioned here? And maybe they could let the Layers Magazine folks know too...

@ Pat Willener... yes it really is hard to find a full Shockwave installer.

The link you provided does indeed apparently allow you to choose a Windows Full Installer. However when you select this Full Installer, you're simply taken to the standard http://get.adobe.com/shockwave/ page, where the only option offered is to download the 6.32MB Slim Installer. I think sections of the Adobe website could do with a serious make-over because they are littered with errors, pretty confused and therefore pretty confusing.

For example, when I visit the "Test Shockwave" page, if my install has been successful, am I meant to see an "animation playing below the labeled box" as the web page text says I should (and as used to be the case, I believe), or should I just see the static version box reporting my version number?